Trio (17 page)

Step by step, this redemption.

So that everyone would have contributed to mixing things up, what an idea anyway to bring the packet of old papers up to date, would it have been Théo who had it, it’s hard to see who else to attribute it to since we haven’t had anymore news of Léo, and as for Alphonse, Alfred, and other Alberts, in short I can still hear the master saying to me, what do we know of the truth, where do you think it hangs out, down the well stark naked, poppycock, in the heads that their owners call cool, certainly not there either, the truth requires secret places to hide in, what did he mean with his secret places.

Doesn’t time fly, yes, it’ll soon be Easter.

That voice, even Marie’s that you can hardly recognize, we really are going to have to appeal to Théodore but there’s no hurry, patience, patience.

And if the great figures become blurred and the heart isn’t in it anymore we’ll find another angle.

In any case, when they came to tell him that the uncle had had a heart attack she immediately linked it to that of the brother, that was years before when everything was still in place, I mean in working order, the way of life in the gentlemen’s house, guests, visitors, servants, the alterations, the improvements, the tenant farmers to deal with, the neighbors to be polite to, people just don’t know the kind of worries that arise from this kind of idle life, you can call it that in comparison with the life of the laboring classes.

And taking advantage of a moment’s inattention to get in a remark about it’s just life, something like that, after all since it’s necessary, but regretting it very quickly because there are some words that stick in your throat.

Or trying to mention the day and the time, that mild April, a pause in his absurd movement toward what.

Only too easy to epilogue on destiny, nothingness, the nothing-you- carry-with-you, and the illusion of accomplishing anything whatever.

Cut.

Or of the opposite movement, which reimmersed him at that time in the procession of masks, figures and symbols, a whole section of collapsing memory, what were they actually, those characters who so absorbed us with their worries, their copulations and their funerals.

Uncle Alexandre, that old crackpot.

The so-called nephews, those little hoodlums, cheap gigolos who went from one old man to the next for the price of their not so fresh youth.

Ugly soul, rotten to the core.

Those moments of truth, were they any better than the others, those of the fable, you might well ask yourself.

In short, the excellent Théo had great difficulty shaking off the master’s chimeras.

It seems that Madame Marie gives him a helping hand when he needs one, she still has all her wits about her, and when he isn’t sure where to place this or that event in relation to another she comes out with her opinion, which facilitates the work.

As for me, I can still see him, our drunkard, with his suitcase full of advertising leaflets, he had them in all shapes and sizes and on all subjects, he went and picked them up in printing shops and out of dustbins, a job that filled an entire existence, he used some for toilet paper, he used to distribute them very ceremoniously in the bistros against a glass of red, he’d completely lost his bearings, the local people used to laugh at him.

And when he was home in the evenings, he fed his folly by classifying his leaflets, the vacuum cleaner pile, the washing machine one, the electric iron one, the razors, the potato-mashers, the peelers, the crushers, the concrete-mixers, the beauty preparations, the health ones, the hygienic ones
 
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Try to disentangle reasons for false trails.

In other words, to find out why the manuscript is stuffed full of information likely to mislead anyone who consults it.

The uncle’s motives in doing this.

Fundamentally a very ordinary story of an old artist whose imagination has deserted him and who is trying to get by with subterfuges, complications of form, fancy writing, pretensions to metaphysics and symbolism, why the hell do we have to go in for all that, Théodore said to himself, and nevertheless went on with his tidying up.

Until the day when he realizes that he himself has become this juggler at the end of his tether, and that the story of this contorted, concocted, controversial manuscript is now well and truly his own, Mortin reincarnated in his nephew, marvelous, you should have seen how
 
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Potbellied, my dear, hawking and spitting and not even clean in his person, ah, how right they are when they say
 
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Yes indeed, you wouldn’t think it, that poor old man, but I tell you, haven’t you noticed the way he looks at women, psspss, well it amuses
me.

Radishes were in season now, and new potatoes and asparagus, doesn’t time fly.

And, said Mademoiselle Moine, after all why should I bother my head, my sister-in-law isn’t a princess, at that price I can’t afford to buy more than one bundle, it was always one of my mother’s principles
 
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To which Madame Dubard replied, I agree with you, brought up the way we were it mortifies us to see the way they squander money these days, I’m going to wait another two weeks, whereupon the other said, after all so am I, my sister-in-law isn’t a princess, and she put the asparagus back on the stall, the grocer’s wife was amused and told them they were right, but she has to keep a bit of everything for the townspeople who come for weekends, they don’t care what things cost.

Lapse into second childhood, that’s easy to say, he said, but I was the one he bored to death every morning telling me his dreams and I tell you he was foundering in it, and all his fancy writing, pretension, complication, administration
 
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Cut.

The thing is, I’ll tell you
 
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Cut.

The thing is, what is there to say
 
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Cut.

The thing is that I, no longer the same, no, phenomenon, yes, overwhelming, what bad luck, poor child, so nicely, all of a sudden, his head, putrefaction, phoenix, a phoenix all right, but the difficulty
 
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These walls, lids, shackles.

As if the adventure, poor child, wasn’t the same for everybody.

To pulverize, that’s to reduce to dust.

Legend, something that has to be read.

Step by step, this redemption.

Yes but, well, me, those as deny it, I understand them.

The whole so allusive, alas, no other way.

Sweet April is on its way out, the harm has been done, the action is starting all over again.

No longer the same, easy to say, luckily there’s the dream, and your method, you know where you can put it
 
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Do you understand what you’re reading, no, go on, personally I’m quite willing to take up the thread again, just to pass the time, doesn’t it
 
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and his greasy little hat on his crown, looking for, to haunt the cemeteries, clever, to check there that he’s really dead, next week, not to be able to hear, duty, duty, this alarming imposition, I agree with you that in one sense, until we have more information, taking the circumstances into account, let’s see, adjusted his little pince-nez at the end of its little ribbon, and that’s what after so many years of hard labor
 
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Sweet April, yeah.

Bad luck, yeah.

Dream, oh benediction, come.

The time when he suddenly appeared out of a pumpkin, we shall see, we shall hear, we shall, yeah, remake our phrases, the only way to liquidate them.

A grand phrase that would have to be relinquished so as to shine out beyond the frightful cemetery.

So Monsieur Théodore still aping, still applying himself to discover the reason, in all that crap, given that it was all chance, I don’t mind, even though not so very pure, why some passages were so obscure, he makes a discovery when he puts on his uncle’s pince-nez, but there, how to explain it, something kind of occulted by
 
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Traces of effacement.

Then, putting them on the wrong way around, something else occulted by
 
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Then just one eye for one lens and for the other, then the other eye for the other one, and for the first one, a staggering discovery, but how to explain it.

So perturbed that he puts himself not in Monsieur Alexandre’s eye, but in his ear.

This time the discovery is indescribable, which shows that his pitch was not that of the conservatoire.

He must have suffered from a buzzing noise in his ears, he said, but can you be satisfied by that sort of evasion.

He became so cheerful it was enough to break your heart, he came out of his room saying it must be occulting an era that’s just beginning, the snag of the ana-time in which I am still struggling.

Ah, these poets.

The blue mountain comes back and the smells of
 
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ah, what was Monsieur Alexandre’s nose like, possibility of nasal expression, he was so sensitive, so close to nature, all the more so as it turns out that his lucubrations were only produced a few days before his death.

And to come back to those little hoodlums, how many times didn’t we catch them in the mornings, don’t cut me off, fiddling around with each other, you should have seen it, not a bit embarrassed or ashamed, Madame Marie was quite right to say that it was their education, punishment, damnation, what the hell did it have to do with us, boys will be boys, that had spoiled them rotten, but the content, what do you make of that, with details to back it up, to give a bit of spice to his insipid pages, he was well aware of it, the old crackpot.

So then looked for the said details among the jumble of notes but could find nothing but entries crossed out, effaced, what a pity, we could have made some dough out of those revelations, although these days that sort of thing is a bit overrated don’t you think.

And it’s not exactly, the other woman continued, beside herself with fury, as if he deprived himself of the pleasure of stuffing it up his nephews’ assholes, the old bugger, even so you aren’t going to tell me
 
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Jesus, you ought to be ashamed.

In short, truth lies within other people, and apropos of assholes, on Candlemas, or Cometopass, or CometoMass day
 
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oh, I give up
 
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I need, look, a dart here, pointing to her breast, and the opening should come down to here, and as for the length I leave that to you, but the other couldn’t see very well, then he puts down his glasses and he wonders, is it a symbol, I’ve never appreciated that sort of thing either, but what can one do against the inevitable, a few days before his death.

Occulting an era that’s just beginning.

Because death, what can it be the symbol of, eh, you can’t answer.

Multiply its occurrences, that’s all one can do.

Those of my uncle in any case, we haven’t skimped on their number.

When for example I
 
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Théo gets back into his uncle’s old harness and provides a sequel to that confused mass of notes, marginal comments, scraps and memories, and Marie, who spies on him, hears him, on the evenings when he’s got very excited, cursing the dead man, a fine example of loyalty to his memory.

His uncle, his uncle, an old whoremonger neither more nor less, and the young man, he’s nothing to boast of, even so it’s about time the facts were put straight, what’s all that ridiculous highfalutin stuff, hm, asparagus has gone down but eggs, what’s the matter with them this year, maybe the Dutch hens are taking the pill, who can tell, it seems it’s even worse in Denmark, dildos for children and
 
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oh stop it Madame Buvard there’s a young lady present, but she was having a quiet giggle, what about the darling buds of May, Mademoiselle, are they coming out, at your age I had a fabulous boyfriend.

When, one cold early morning in October for example, I was through the cemetery gate and walking along alley number three hundred and thirty-three, time immemorial, looking for that grave of that whom, good God, the aunt, her niece, her son-in-law, her daughter-in-law, the whole chrysanthemum tribe in the notebook, rustling, a smell of dead things, and when I say things, an old stump, an old asshole, in spite of the refinement of the decor that filth in his heart which messed up his Easter mornings, poor little angel, those posies of pricks under the lilacs, those poop-hole wallflowers, he was so very sad I give you my word, sniffling and snuffling, hawking and spitting, his false teeth in the little tortoiseshell box that the aunt or her niece or her son-indaw, well yes, eh, old age, he was well able to imagine Théo taking his place and sorting out the frightful pile of shit, excuse the expression, he might change the order of the pages but the ascent took place without anyone’s help and it was fatal, fatal, d’you hear me, that little girl’s voice, perfect diction up to the fatal pass, an image that comes down to us from time immemorial.

The lilies of the big sleep.

And incidentally, sleeping twelve hours a day like that, is it really hygienic, for twenty nightmares that almost kill you, he replied, a dream of mist over there pays dividends.

What do you feel at this moment.

An enormous sadness, an ordeal out of all proportion.

That manitou, then.

Eclipsed, as you might say, we’ll make do without the Alphonses, the Alfreds, and other Alberts.

Well yes then, looking for that grave in the early morning he stumbles over a crackpot crouching among the chrysanthemums, is that any place to do your business, the fellow stammered his excuses, a string of farts, all the mythological tribe in memory of two or three individuals who were excessive but had been hit by the hurricane of the
 
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A missing link.

He had got up early one morning to avoid the flock of fiddlers, but is that any reason for shitting on the dead like that.

Especially as we need to revive this idyll, hey nonny no.